And the post-Galvin Motorola just keeps on truckin'! When the company's founder's grandson finally "resigned" due to a disagreement with the board of directors ("We want you to turn this company around" / "But if we keep going in the same direction eventually we'll go all the way around the world anyway"), there was a pretty solid consensus that as soon as the company had hired a replacement, it would probably heed the long-repeated advice of analysts and sell off its semiconductor business so that it could focus all its attention on its world-saving mission of making cell phones with little cameras in them.

As it turns out, though, Motorola's not going to wait until a new CEO comes on board. A couple of weeks ago, it briefly looked like maybe its whole chipmaking unit was up for sale, but that turned out to be a false alarm; Motorola was only selling off an interconnect technology that hooked "main processors to other systems." Still, that revealed what appeared to be a certain "if it ain't a phone, sell it off" mindset... a mindset that has now crystallized still further in the harsh light of day. Yes, what we thought might happen eventually appears to have happened already: faithful viewer Jeff Duran tipped us off to a Reuters article which confirms that, you betcha, Motorola has finally decided to spin off its entire semiconductor business as a separate entity.

It's probably worth mentioning that a spin-off doesn't necessarily mean a sell-off-- Apple still owns FileMaker, Inc., for example, and the spun-off Newton company was never sold, despite what we're told were several reasonable offers. Sure, Motorola has already said it's going the publicly-traded route with this spin-off, but we suppose it's possible that it could still retain a majority of the stock in "Semiconductors 'R' Us" or whatever. But given how much money Motorola's chipmaking venture has lost in recent years, we'd be pretty darn surprised if the goal here isn't the amputation of a dying limb so it doesn't take the rest of organism down with it.

That said, do you suppose anyone out there is nuts enough to actually buy this thing? Apple, in particular, has been mentioned as a candidate, since it could then get all of Motorola's PowerPC technology under its own roof. (Don't forget, Motorolan G4s are still used in Apple's PowerBooks, iMacs, and eMacs.) Frankly, though, we can't see Apple wanting to take on a whole chipmaking business just to work on its own processors-- especially since the company seems pretty shrewd about its purchases and rarely buys that kind of red ink. No, the only organization we can see bothering to scrape together the cash to effect a buyout in this economy is, well, us.

In fact, we've got this plan to make a direct offer to Motorola for its chipmaking unit before the spin-off takes place, figuring that the company would much rather have cash on the barrelhead and no questions asked than go through all that SEC malarkey, the harrowing IPO experience, etc. We've just been under the couch cushions and through the winter coat pockets, and we've got $7.34 so far. Anyone want to shoot us the remaining $12.66 so we can make a reasonable offer?